Coup Attempt? in Turkey

[Quicklet]

Shit is going down again in Turkey. Mass arrests of members of parliament of the third-largest party there, the Pro-Kurdish Party (HDP). This is a very bad sign.

https://twitter.com/nateschenkkan/st...06225773170689

Turkey appears to be arresting all the HDP MPs, third-largest party in parliament. This is it, people.

[Meph]

get trump in and nuke the motherfuckers

[Drai]

Oh shit, I was hoping this shit was taken care of D: it had gotten really quiet

[myreality]

What kind of solution could fix this scenario
(utterly destroy) ? Another Iraq?

[Quicklet]

Not sure. It's going to be a mess -- Erdogan has probably purged enough of the secular factions that a real military coup is not possible.

The biggest danger is Turkey abandons NATO and allies with Russia. Probably still a ways off from that but that seems to be the direction things are moving in. Erdogan is really insistent about the US handing over Gulen, and I think if we refuse he's going to turn away from the US.

Keep in mind that Turkey is the 8th most powerful military in the world, so it's a fucking big deal if they end up in a civil war or become antagonistic to the West.

[kuronosan]

That's like saying it's a big fucking deal if Chaotzu decides to team up with Piccolo.

They still aren't beating Goku.

[Quicklet]

US has an air base in Turkey that's used to stage a lot of the air missions in Syria to combat ISIS. If Turkey stops cooperating or tries to use it as leverage, it will fuck with the ability to mount an offensive on Raqqa.

As an update, best I can tell they didn't arrest all HDP members of parliament but something like a third of them including a bunch of the leadership. HDP is not very popular in Turkey (they got about ~10% of the vote), but this is going to antagonize the Kurdish groups (in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) more and threaten to really destabilize the situation in Syria further.

[Andalusian girls]

as Quicklet pointed out Turkey is a member of NATO so any armed conflict between us and them would require us to declare war on ourselves and is shall we say unlikely.

however, the geopolitical ramifications of Turkey exiting the western orbit would be calamitous enough without a repeat of Mohács. beyond the Incirlik Air Base, from which we launch combat sorties against ISIS, Turkey has locked down their border to Daesh infiltration, has carved out safe zones in northern Syria for rebel use, is currently by far the largest host country of Syrian refugees, struck a deal with the EU to help stem the influx of unauthorized refugees, and any idea of increased autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan (up to and including an independent Kurdistan; an independence referendum is expected to be held after Mosul is liberated) is at the mercy of acquiescence from Ankara. they are also inveterate opponents of the Assad regime and any efforts to bring about its downfall would require their cooperation.

which places us in a wretched position. as we recently saw with Duterte, should the United States push longtime allies too hard over humanitarian and civil rights issues there are unsavory world actors in Russia and China willing to offer unconditional economic and political support with no such didactic moralizing attached. we must walk a tightrope, using what leverage is available to us to prevent the worst excesses of Erdogan while maintaining the strategic alliance that is of such utility to us and our European allies. it may feel good to kick over the table and condemn the Turks for their transgressions by separating entirely, but it is a well-observed phenomenon authoritarian allies of the United States tend to liberalize over time and pushing Turkey away to the extent it realigns with the autocratic revisionist powers would only embolden the worst instincts of its leader.

[Zealot]

Explain to me your criteria for "liberalizing" here, because my observations have led to conflicting conclusions and I would like to know what I'm missing.

[Quicklet]

as Quicklet pointed out Turkey is a member of NATO so any armed conflict between us and them would require us to declare war on ourselves and is shall we say unlikely.

however, the geopolitical ramifications of Turkey exiting the western orbit would be calamitous enough without a repeat of Mohács. beyond the Incirlik Air Base, from which we launch combat sorties against ISIS, Turkey has locked down their border to Daesh infiltration, has carved out safe zones in northern Syria for rebel use, is currently by far the largest host country of Syrian refugees, struck a deal with the EU to help stem the influx of unauthorized refugees, and any idea of increased autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan (up to and including an independent Kurdistan; an independence referendum is expected to be held after Mosul is liberated) is at the mercy of acquiescence from Ankara. they are also inveterate opponents of the Assad regime and any efforts to bring about its downfall would require their cooperation.

which places us in a wretched position. as we recently saw with Duterte, should the United States push longtime allies too hard over humanitarian and civil rights issues there are unsavory world actors in Russia and China willing to offer unconditional economic and political support with no such didactic moralizing attached. we must walk a tightrope, using what leverage is available to us to prevent the worst excesses of Erdogan while maintaining the strategic alliance that is of such utility to us and our European allies. it may feel good to kick over the table and condemn the Turks for their transgressions by separating entirely, but it is a well-observed phenomenon authoritarian allies of the United States tend to liberalize over time and pushing Turkey away to the extent it realigns with the autocratic revisionist powers would only embolden the worst instincts of its leader.

As a practical matter, getting rid of ISIS's control of land in Syria and Iraq is the #1 priority for US foreign policy right now, so while I don't expect the US to acquiesce to Turkey's demands regarding Gulen, I don't think we would do anything that would jeopardize the strategic goal of eliminating ISIS. The question is whether Turkey or Russia will do something that will force the issue anyway. There are rumors that Russia could be planning on crushing what's left of Aleppo during the transition from the election to the inauguration. It would be a dramatic escalation and would pose a real test for the international community about how to respond.

Long-term I don't think Erdogan will reform. I expect the most likely course of action would be for US intelligence to support activities that would get him out of power while trying to avoid provoking a direct confrontation about his violations of human rights. Basically something similar to what happened in Ukraine with Yanukovich.

[Andalusian girls]

Explain to me your criteria for "liberalizing" here, because my observations have led to conflicting conclusions and I would like to know what I'm missing.

i believe we ruminated over the theoreticals of this issue utilizing our mutual proxy so allow me to present three contrasted case studies instead.

the first and most illustrative is the North Korean-South Korean divide. the South Korea the United States choice to defend from northern aggression was a brutally repressive society ruled by a torture-happy tyrant by the name of Syngman Rhee, a man arguably more despotic than his communist counterpart in North Korea. however, under the aegis of the United States South Korea embarked on a program of economic liberalization that has produced one of the highest standards of living in the world, and following the 1987 student protests this economic liberalization was followed by a full democratic transition. compare such to the totalitarian and penurious North Korea of today, a region that was the traditional economic center of the peninsula, and the location of a regime that has maintained its hold on power through the support of the Chinese government. the contrast in progression could not be more stark.

to the Middle East! Saddam was a prick but he was accurate in saying that under Ottoman administrative division Kuwait had been a part of the zones constituting Iraq, and there is essentially no ethnic or religious differences between the two peoples. again take note of how the Soviet-aligned Ba'athists did in regards to human development and political freedom relative to the American-aligned Kuwaitis. while not a true democracy (given the powers of the hereditary Emir) Kuwait ranks first in the world gender gap report among all Middle Eastern nations, they elect a national parliament through universal suffrage, their judicial system is both secular and independent, and they recently elected their first female members to parliament. the separation between a Kuwait that has been liberalizing for decades and the former Ba'athist regimes of Iraq and Syria is both monumental and self-evident.

to the last and slightly different marker. Saudi Arabia is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most illiberal societies in the world, a draconian state where institutionalized theological repression is the order of the day. by contrast, in international rankings Iran (the other regional theocracy) consistently scores higher in most freedom measures. yet we are currently in the midst of the most transitional reformation of Saudi society in modernity. suffrage was extended to women in 2015 marking the first time an XX ballot ever registered in the kingdom. the Mutawa (a kind of religious police) had their powers to both pursue and arrest suspects rescinded, crippling a much-detested state apparatus of terror. women are now allowed to view their marriage contracts + the Saudi educational system is moving away from Quranic interpretation to STEM. in addition to these already enacted reforms the crown prince has unveiled a robust program of both economic and political liberalization titled Vision 2030 promising to continue to move the country forward with more rapidity than any outside observer would have imagined.

that is to say, even though Saudi Arabia began as an even more repressive state than Iran it today is making tangible movement toward liberalization in a manner not present in its Shiia counterpart. and i strongly expect that should this trend continue Saudi Arabia will be a considerably more liberal society than Iran within the next twenty or thirty years. of course, nothing is guaranteed, and as Tocqueville said, 'the most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform'. and so Saudi reforms, while greatly encouraging, are also slightly terrifying given the domestic alternative to the House of Saud.

now all this isn't to say the United States has been an intractable ally of democracy, or that our influence has been the sole cause of these instances of liberalization. episodes of retrograde autocratic movement either tacitly condoned or directly supported by us are many. but i believe the record to be clear that autocracies caught in the western orbit trend towards liberalization more than those centripetal to the Soviet/Russian/Iranian/Chinese systems, and this disparity of progression is the case even for linked societies that once had roughly equivalent jump off points.

[Andalusian girls]

There are rumors that Russia could be planning on crushing what's left of Aleppo during the transition from the election to the inauguration. It would be a dramatic escalation and would pose a real test for the international community about how to respond.

this is precisely what i most fear. i imagine the international response will be tepid at best as our electoral system cripples our response until at least January and the Europeans are too divided to pursue meaningful measures on their own.

[Twilight Sky]

I fear that Putin intends to turn on the Syrian President and annex Syria. I don't support the Syrian Government, and I'm aware the two are allies, but the seemingly sheer amount of support for the Syrian Government and inhuman bombing this guy is doing is a little suspicious. Crush everything, leaving Assad with only his tiny army, and then waves of Russian troops come roaring in. :/ It would truly be a bastardizing dick-headed move and would certainly put all of Europe on notice.

Also there is fear in Finland that the Russians are buying up real-estate to place military soldiers there. So the government is looking into ways of handling that.

Just fear, etc, but you gotta admit, Russia seemingly appears to be going back to their Soviet Union ways of conquest.

[kuronosan]

Putin. Not Russia.

Putin is pretty much their Trump.

"MEMBER WHEN WE WERE THE SOVIET UNION AND THINGS WERE GREAT"

Well, no. The propaganda they spew out is ridiculous. They're even going so far as to convince their people that Gorbachev was a sock puppet installed by Reagan to bankrupt Russia to scare them into dissolving the USSR.

I know some of you guys think Russia is the devil but they're honestly in the same kind of boat as us, just further down the river.

[Yuri-G]

I've always felt that the Russians were our cousins across the ocean. Their world isn't so different from ours, just - as you put it - further down the river.

[Zetanio]

Their world is FAR different.

Are you being serious?

[kuronosan]

I've always felt that the Russians were our cousins across the ocean. Their world isn't so different from ours, just - as you put it - further down the river.

Oh it's a way different world. Their politics and day to day are what are the same.

[Roranora]

hrm

[Yuri-G]

Their world is FAR different.

Are you being serious?

Their world is different, but I meant it in the sense that we are both ruled by an elite class that pretends to watch out for the common man when really they couldn't give two shits less as long as they keep making money/power/influence.

[Thunder]

when you put it like that, and say that russia/US fall under those descriptions, who do you think is different? lol